Project leader

Funding source

Formas - The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning

Project Details

Start date: 01/01/2010

End date: 31/12/2013

Funding: 20000000SEK

Description

This project aims at understanding and advanced simulation of climate change in the Arctic including its impact on land areas, and incorporating interaction between simulation results and a wide stakeholder community. The goal is to establish a chain of knowledge starting from the global climate change signal and its Arctic amplification, via Arctic processes in ocean, atmosphere, cryosphere and hydrosphere to consequences on the land surface in northern latitudes with a special emphasis on local impact in the Abisko area. This challenge is addressed by utilizing and further developing advanced model tools for process studies and climate scenario simulations. Covering a range of spatial scales, a global climate model will generate climate change scenarios, which will be downscaled to an Arctic domain by a regional climate system model including vegetation, hydrology and permafrost. Further scale reduction will be performed by a statistical model (down to 100 m) focusing on the Abisko area, and by a high resolution local atmosphere model (5 km). Scenario results will be interpreted in collaboration with stakeholder groups. Methods for consequence assessment will be developed together with those groups (e.g. reindeer herding, economy and infrastructure). Even possible adaptation measures will be tested against scenarios.